Scottish Ebola healthcare worker taken to isolation unit in London

An Ebola patient is transferred on to a Hercules transport plane at Glasgow Airport in Scotland on 30 December.(Reuters/Stringer)

A female healthcare worker who was diagnosed with Ebola after returning from Sierra Leone to Scotland, is being transferred to a specialist unit in London.

The woman who had been working with Save the Children in the Ebola-stricken country left Gartnavel Hospital in Glasgow just after 3am on Tuesday and was being taken to the isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, North London.

Six police vehicles accompanied two ambulances as she was taken to Glasgow Airport.

Passengers on the same British Airways Heathrow flight as the worker are being tracked down, but the risk to the public was very low, authorities said.

Jeremy Hunt, who chaired an emergency Cobra meeting on Monday evening, said the government was doing "absolutely everything it needs to" to keep the public safe.

"We are also reviewing our procedures and protocols for all the other NHS workers who are working at the moment in Sierra Leone," he added.